An extra large pot

I am a firm believer in the power of soup.

A good soup, I am thoroughly convinced, can fix a lot of things. And in the past few weeks, I've heard of quite a few people in need of help.

For starters, there's Alex. We spent yesterday in the emergency room at Cape Cod hospital. Everything is fine—he just got boarded at his Sunday morning hockey game is all—and they thought he might have broken his clavicle, or maybe a few ribs. But he didn't, and although it hurts when he breathes deeply and his arm is in a sling and he is acting just the slightest bit loopy from all the vicodin, in the big scheme of things, he is a-okay. Groovy, really, compared to what could have been.

There's also the issue of my father. Last week, he broke his nose playing basketball. (Clearly, we need to do something about these mens leagues!) My mother took him to the doctor, who told him he would have to wait a week for the swelling to go down, and then, once he was starting to feel a little better, they would have to break his nose all over again. They recommended he go under general anesthesia for all this, but he courageously declared that if women can endure childbirth, than surely he could do this. (Go PAPA!)

There have been other people we know, too, weathering more difficult things. There's my mother's friend who just had a (successful! curing!) double mastectomy, and Alex's aunt who just survived open-heart surgery. But of course, none of these really compare to the main event going on down in Haiti. Figuring out how to respond to a crisis like that is going to take a lot more than soup.

There is so much to do in Haiti that it's hard to know where to start. People injured in the earthquake need medical help, of course, and food and water most urgently. Children need to be reunited with their families and parents need help searching for aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and grandparents. Even more overwhelmingly, in the long term, a whole society needs to be rebuilt. This will take money and materials and laborers, and it will also take time. Internationally, everyone will contribute what they can, and eventually we will get the job done.

But in the meantime, it's hard to know what to do. Nothing heals overnight—not a country of survivors, or a broken nose, or an opened-up heart. I'm not much good at flowers, or get-well balloons, or even always cards, but I can always make soup. I made a batch this weekend—sautéed onions and carrots and mushrooms and sausage with a rich red wine and beef broth and thick blooms of kale and red kidney beans and farro hanging about. I brought some over to Alex's aunt, and I sent the recipe to my mom to make for my dad, and I heated Alex up a bowl when we got home from the hospital last night. If I could send an extra large pot down to Haiti, I would.

It isn't much, I know, but it's what I know how to do, and it comes with the best of hopeful thoughts in mind.

FARRO SOUP
with sausage, dinosaur kale, and kidney beans

The thing I like about this soup is that it is both delicious and truly good for you. There isn't an unhealthy bone in its build—unless you count the sausage, which I don't so long as it comes from a pastured, anti-biotics-free pig. The only unusual ingredient is the farro, an ancient variety of wheat also known as emmer. We discovered it through the grain CSA we joined this year (thanks to Andrea! more on that soon!), but it is also fairly readily available at health food stores. If you can't find it locally, barley would make a fine substitute. Also, we used ground pork sausage for the meat, because that was all we had, but I have a feeling if you had something more Italian sausage or kielbasa-like, it would make an excellent replacement. Oh! and one more thing: for the mushrooms, we used dried and then rehydrated shiitakes from Julie Winslow, but any other dried mushroom with the same depth of flavor and heft, like a porcini or an oyster, would be fine.

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup yellow storage onions, chopped
1/2 cup carrots, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon rosemary, fresh or dried
1/2 pound pork sausage
1/2 cup mushrooms, coarsely chopped
salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1 cup red wine
3 cups beef broth, preferably homemade
6 ounces uncooked farro, rinsed and soaked overnight
1/2 pound kale, coarsely chopped
optional, but good: some sort of cheese for topping (grated Parmesan, feta, chevre, etc.)

Heat up the oil in a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot. Sauté the onions over medium-high heat for about five minutes on their own, then turn the heat down to medium and add the carrots, the garlic, and the rosemary. When the vegetables have taken up most of the oil and the onions are translucent, add the sausage. Wait a minute or so until it starts to brown, then add the mushrooms and salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, for another three minutes or so, until the mushrooms soften and the sausage is cooked through.

Add the crushed tomatoes, the red wine, the beef broth, and the farro, cover the pot, and bring the soup to a boil. Turn the heat down to simmer and continue cooking, stirring and tasting occasionally, until the farro is almost tender, about 45 minutes. At this point, add the kale, and season the soup again with salt and freshly cracked pepper to taste. Simmer the soup, still covered, for another 15 minutes or so, or until the farro is soft and chewy. Serve the soup hot, and if you decide to go for the cheese, sprinkle it on top.